Watchdog

MAHILEU, Belarus -- Vandals have desecrated a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in the eastern Belarusian city of Mahileu.

Authorities said on November 21 that unknown perpetrators had poured black paint on the stone over the weekend.

The stone marks the site of the Jewish ghetto in Mahileu during the Nazi World War II occupation of the 1940s.

In June, 2012, unknown perpetrators poured brown paint on the same stone. Nobody was held responsible then.

Jews have lived in Mahileu since the 16th century. In the 19th century, the town was a center of Jewish religious study and Hassidism.

Moscow authorities have detained a political activist at an improvised memorial near the Kremlin where Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was gunned down last year.

The OVD-Info online news portal reported on November 21 that police detained Nadir Fatov near Nemtsov's memorial on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge after he tried to prevent the removal of flowers and candles from the site.

Moscow authorities periodically remove the improvised Nemtsov memorial from the bridge.

Activists have organized a night watch at Nemtsov's memorial to prevent the removal of flowers and candles.

Nemtsov was fatally shot on a bridge near the Kremlin on February 27, 2015.

Several men from the North Caucasus region have been arrested and charged with Nemtsov's killing.

Nemtsov's relatives and lawyers have expressed skepticism about the probe, insisting the killing must have been ordered by high-ranking Russian officials.

With reporting by OVD-Info